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It’s 10.30 on a Monday morning and enumerator Kavita Kumari, 30, has simply popped the query.
Bihar is within the midst of an unprecedented train — the caste-based survey — and in Kalyanbigha village in Bihar’s Nalanda district, Kavita and three different enumerators, all academics in close by faculties, are a part of an train that has set off one of many hottest political debates in latest instances and obtained the Opposition to rally across the politics of social justice.
While the Centre has stated no to a nation-wide caste census, in Bihar, with all political events, together with the BJP, becoming a member of arms to again Nitish’s name for a caste census, the state, with a nod from the Supreme Court, turned the primary state to launch the two-phased caste-based headcount on January 7 this yr.
As with the Census carried out by the Registrar General of India (RGI), the first phase of Bihar’s ‘Jaati Aadharit Ganana’ or Bihar Caste-Based Survey, which lasted till January 21, concerned a houselisting train as a part of which enumerators counted homes and households.
The ongoing second part, which kicked off on April 15, entails a military of enumerators, largely college academics, fanning out throughout the state, armed with a set of 17 questions – title, gender, marital standing, faith, instructional qualification, and, amongst others, that almost all contested of all of them, in Column No. 3 that’s marked ‘Caste’.
Kalyanbigha, a part of Barah panchayat in Gharnaut Assembly section in Nalanda, is the ancestral dwelling of JD(U) supremo and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The village of over 500 households has a dominant inhabitants of Kurmis, a part of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), adopted by Scheduled Caste Manjhis. The village additionally has the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) of Kahaars and Nais, in addition to OBC Yadavs, upper-caste Brahmins, and a lone household of the Scheduled Caste Doms.
In Kalyanbigha, a number of homes are below lock, together with that of its most well-known non-resident: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The two-storey pucca home, which stood as a brick-and-mud construction with a thatched roof till a number of years in the past, can be counted as a ‘non-residential house’ by the Census group immediately.
As Kavita Kumari’s pencil hovers over Column No. 3, Dilip Kumar, 64, responds: “Kurmi”. It’s one of many 216 castes listed in Kavita’s type. An OBC and agrarian caste to which Nitish himself belongs, Kurmis make up one half of the famed Kurmi-Kushwaha mixture that’s courted by nearly all events.
Dilip Kumar breezes by way of the 17 questions which are put to him: names of his relations, marital standing, faith, instructional qualification, work standing, month-to-month earnings, and so forth. Dilip declares he’s a farmer with six bighas of agricultural land, earns a month-to-month earnings of Rs 5,000, has studied as much as Class 10 and that his son, Suryakant Kumar, works in a non-public firm.
“Achchha hai sab jati ki ginti ho jayegi…Kuchh na kuchh sarkar karegi hi garibon ke liye (It is good that all castes will be counted. The government will do something for the poor),” says Dilip.
His neighbour Brajesh Kumar, 51, who lives in a brick-and-tile home and who owns six bighas, tells the enumerator that he earns a median month-to-month earnings of “Rs 6,000” and declares himself a Kurmi.
As Kavita asks for his id card, Brajesh Kumar says, “I can’t give you my Aadhaar card as it is linked to my bank account. There is a lot of fraud happening these days.” He lastly settles on his ration card that lists his spouse Pinky Kumari, 18-year-old daughter Priya and 16-year-old son Ayush.
Brajesh will not be satisfied in regards to the survey. “It is only politicians who stand to gain from such an exercise, not common people like us.”
Metres away, in Ward No 13 of the village, enumerator Rajani Kumari has already been to round 5 houses and hopes to finish the survey at three extra houses by night.
Rajani Kumari, 33, a highschool trainer who heads a unit of six enumerators, together with the group in Kalyanbigha, says, “People may have their opinion but almost everyone is willing to be counted. But we know that most people play down their income or provide incomplete information because they think they’ll stand to gain that way… they think maybe the government will extend them some benefits.”
It’s a scene that performs out as Rajani Kumar visits the home of Ramiqbal Yadav, 55.
Ramiqbal’s spouse Ramkumari Yadav, who solutions the enumerator’s questions, says theirs is a household of 10 and that her husband Ramiqbal sells greens in Surat. She declares his earnings as Rs 5,000 a month. As Rajani sounds sceptical – “why would he leave the state to work for such meagre earnings?”, Ramkumari protests loudly, “I am not lying. That’s how much he earns. I do not know why he did not want to work in Bihar. Anyway, what is the point of this exercise? Why is the government counting castes? Will anything good come of this?”
It’s a cue for enumerator Rajani Kumari to hurry by way of the remaining questions and transfer to the subsequent home. “After we are done with the survey, we have to feed all the information into the app. It takes close to two hours to upload all the details,” she says.
Sangeeta Kumari, 50, the third enumerator in Kalyanbigha immediately, has been assigned 245 homes, most of those on the outskirts of the village, in Ward No. 14, the place the Scheduled Castes dwell.
As Sangeeta heads in direction of one of many SC Manjhi households, Raja Malik, 25, calls out to her: “Madam, ek hi ghar hain hum logon ka, pahle hamara ghar dekh liya jaaye (We are just one family… please survey us before you move on).”
Brothers Raj Malik and Raja Malik belong to the one Dom household within the village. Doms, one of many 21 Scheduled Castes within the state and socially one of the vital weak, make up lower than one per cent of the state’s inhabitants.
Standing out their mud home, Raj Malik says, “I am a science graduate but unemployed. My father owns this house. I don’t have a house to my name.”
His brother Raja Malik provides, “I hope that after the caste survey, the government gives priority to those who do not have a house.”
The survey can be accomplished on May 15 and the ultimate report is more likely to be tabled within the monsoon session of the Bihar legislature in July.
Some 28 kilometers from Kalyanbigha, a city adjoining Biharsharif, the district headquarters of Nalanda that’s nonetheless scarred from the latest communal violence in the course of the Ramnavami procession, Akhilesh Kumar, 55, who runs a candy store within the city and belongs to the OBC group, is sad in regards to the survey. “The census only counts castes, not sub-castes. There are so many sub-castes among us Banias (an OBC group) and we have all been put under different heads in the survey. Hinduon ko baantne ki koshish ho rahi hai (This is just an attempt to divide Hindus).”
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